Boy, 14, found hanged in custody

A 14-year-old boy found hanged in a privately-run youth custody centre yesterday is believed to be the youngest person to die in state custody in recent history.

Adam Rickwood, from Burnley in Lancashire, was on remand at the Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in County Durham. He was one of four apparent suicides within the prison system in three days.

"This unprecedented number of tragic deaths in such a short time must prompt the government to act now to review the use of custody for vulnerable people, including young children, and the conditions in which they are held," said Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust.

The teenager was discovered by staff carrying out routine checks in the early hours of yesterday morning. They were unable to revive him and he was later pronounced dead at hospital.

Magistrates had remanded him to the centre for an alleged breach of bail conditions pending his trial on a charge of wounding.

He was the second boy under 16 to die in the youth justice system this year. In April, 15-year-old Gareth Myatt died in a restraint-related incident at another of the UK's three secure training centres, Rainsbrook in Northamptonshire.

The last known suicide of a child under 16 in custody took place in 1991.

Last year it emerged that the Home Office had fined Hassockfield because of lax discipline. However, a subsequent report said the centre, at Medomsley near Consett, had "passed through a phase of crisis management" and had "generally good order".

Hassockfield houses 43 children aged between 14 and 17. Secure training centres are smaller than Young Offenders' Institutions and have a higher staff-to-offender ratio.

The Howard League for Penal Reform yesterday said it had written to the home secretary, David Blunkett, warning him that proposed new rules covering the 2,800 children currently in custody will fail to protect them.

They say the rules will permit children to be physically restrained using methods that cause pain. They can also be routinely stripped for searches, which can include examination of their genital areas, and isolated in cells.

The Howard League claims this will lead to further abuse for many young people who have a history of abuse before entering prison.

"On the one hand, the prison service construes the need for child protection almost entirely around the abuse the children experienced prior to custody," said Frances Crook, the league's director.

"On the other hand, they exclude the abuse children may suffer in prison."

Responding to the league's claims, a Prison Service spokesman said the original version of policy on the regimes for juveniles was issued in 1999, and that this revised version captures all the main changes that have occurred in the juvenile estate since then.